WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump waded into the contested race for House speaker Friday, throwing his support behind one of his top allies on Capitol Hill, Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan.
“As President, I had the honor of presenting Jim with our Country’s highest civilian award, The Presidential Medal of Freedom. So much is learned from sports, and Jim was a master!” Trump said of the Ohio Republican, former NCAA wrestling champ and coach, in a post on Truth Social early Friday.
“He is STRONG on Crime, Borders, our Military/Vets, & 2nd Amendment …” Trump added. “He will be a GREAT Speaker of the House, & has my Complete & Total Endorsement!”
The endorsement appears to take Trump himself out of the running for the speakership after several GOP allies, including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Troy Nehls of Texas, endorsed the former president for the job following Rep. Kevin McCarthy's ouster from the position.
On Thursday, multiple GOP sources confirmed that Trump was considering a visit to the U.S. Capitol early next week. In the words of one GOP lawmaker familiar with the plans, the visit would be a bid to “unify the party” after McCarthy's stunning removal and amid a fractious brawl between Jordan and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., to seize the speaker's gavel.
Speaking on Friday with John Solomon, a right-wing political commentator and founder of the website Just the News, Trump said he hasn’t decided whether he’ll visit the Capitol next week.
Elected to Congress in 2006, Jordan began his career in Washington as a conservative bomb thrower. Like Scalise, he led the Republican Study Committee, the largest caucus of conservatives on the Hill. But, frustrated that the group was too big and slow, Jordan, along with then-Reps. Mark Meadows, Mick Mulvaney and Ron DeSantis, founded the smaller, ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus in 2015.
Freedom Caucus members named Jordan their first chairman, and later that year the group was credited for forcing then-Speaker John Boehner, an Ohioan like Jordan, into an early retirement.
“A terrorist. A legislative terrorist," Boehner said of Jordan during a no-holds-barred interview with Politico in 2017.
Because of that reputation, some moderate members of the GOP conference could balk at a Jordan speakership. And because of the GOP’s razor-thin majority, it would take just five centrist Republicans to block Jordan in a formal speaker vote on the House floor, if all Democrats unite behind Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.
But in recent years, Jordan underwent a stark political transformation. He aligned himself with McCarthy, stopped the public attacks on the GOP leadership team, and was brought into leadership’s inner circle.
In fact, it was McCarthy who pushed for Jordan to get the top GOP slot on the Oversight Committee and later the powerful Judiciary Committee, where he is one of the three leaders of the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
“No one has been more of a team player in the last three years than Jim Jordan,” said a GOP source who has worked with both Trump and Jordan.
Trump is dominating the GOP presidential primary, and his endorsement of Jordan is a big blow to Scalise, the No. 2 Republican leader, who had been positioning himself as the heir apparent to McCarthy but also has been battling blood cancer.
During an interview on Fox News Friday morning, Scalise said he did speak to Trump before he made his endorsement and appeared to downplay it.
“There’s a lot of interest in this race, you know, but at the end of the day, it’s a lot of one-on-one conversations with my colleagues and a lot of introspection about how we get things back on track,” Scalise said on “Fox & Friends.” “The problems that we have internally — they don’t go away with a new speaker.”
Fox News announced that anchor Brett Baier will moderate a televised speaker candidates forum at 6 p.m. Monday featuring Jordan, Scalise and Rep Kevin Hern, R-Okla., the current Republican Study Committee chairman who has been taking steps toward a formal bid.
But hours after announcing the forum, it was canceled when all three men said they would not participate. Two sources familiar with the matter confirmed said that Scalise and Jordan spoke and agreed it would not be a good idea.
A third source familiar told NBC News, “There’s just a lot of members pissed that this could play out so publicly when they want to solve this behind closed doors.”
Scalise and Jordan have virtual meetings Friday with freshmen Republicans and the Congressional Western Caucus on Friday, lawmakers and aides said. Scalise is also meeting with the business-oriented Main Street Caucus and Jordan with the Freedom Caucus on Friday.
The House GOP conference will have a meeting Monday evening as members wrestle with who to elect as speaker. On Tuesday, House Republicans will host their own private forum to hear pitches directly from the candidates. Then on Wednesday, Republicans will hold their closed-door, secret-ballot election for speaker. Once someone wins a simple majority of the 221 GOP lawmakers, that person will become the party’s nominee.
But that GOP nominee still must receive 217 votes — a simple majority of the full House of Representatives — to be elected speaker on the House floor. That higher threshold vexed McCarthy in January, when it took him 15 rounds and a lot of political capital to win the coveted gavel.
Asked whether Wednesday was a realistic time frame for choosing a speaker, Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., who is serving temporarily in the role, told reporters he would "have an announcement from conference on a schedule today."
When questioned on whether he himself was interested in running for the position, McHenry just shook his head and sighed.
